‘Youth Theatre’ conjures up visions of embarrassingly earnest children with talcum powdered hair in a village hall version of The Crucible complete with shaky sets, proud parents and corrosive orange squash. Not so this year’s New Connections at the National Theatre: the four (of ten) productions I was fortunate enough to see were a fantastic showcase of emerging talent.
Annually since 1997 the Connections project has commissioned a number of new plays by leading writers for schools and youth groups around the country to choose from. After extensive effort and evaluation the best are brought together and staged in a festival at the National. This year’s selection included works by Mark Ravenhill and Timberlake Wertenbaker.
The Book of Everything by Peter Tabern. Castle Youth Theatre, Wellingborough
Tabern’s adaptation of a novel by Guus Kuijer charts a father’s struggle with his religious ambitions and inner demons whilst his family gather the courage to resist his abusive behaviour. Sarah Arnold gives an astonishingly mature performance as the long suffering Mother while Sam Perry’s confidence and charisma are more than up to the lead role of younger son Thomas.
Fugee by Abi Morgan. Brewery Youth Theatre, Kendal
This is a wonderful story about a young boy’s quest for asylum and the blurred boundary between childhood and adulthood. The cast play actors who comment on the story their characters are telling, slipping effortlessly back and forth in time. The effect is extraordinary: the insistence on the unreality of events on stage enhances the horror and sympathy for those whose true stories are being dramatised. Joseph Greenwood plays the lead, Kojo, with a perfect blend of innocence and trauma.
It Snows by Bryony Lavery & Frantic Assembly. Sandbach School Theatre, Cheshire
An ordinary day becomes a magical one as full of possibility, mystery and questions without answers as the theatre itself when the snow falls and all the rules change. Sinead McDonnell is mesmerising as she and Tom Namgauds lead a strong ensemble cast in a spectacular production harnessing every storytelling method imaginable.
Burying Your Brother In The Pavement by Jack Thorne. RSAMD Youthworks, Glasgow
A musical about a street killing sounds like a tall order until you consider that you could describe West Side Story in those terms. Jack Thorne’s bittersweet play considers the many different forms in which both grief and love are experienced by young people. Callum Munro’s Tom only really gets to know his brother Luke after losing him while Luke’s death and the mystery surrounding it come to represent something shifting in the heart of the surrounding community itself.
Having not attended the whole of the festival, it is inappropriate for me to try to identify overarching ‘themes’ but I was struck by the uniformly high standard of what I saw. Full use of large ensembles was a prominent feature: there is something endlessly amusing about a group of teenage blokes playing women when done well. The stagecraft was also impressive: It Snows solved the old problem of how to stage people dancing at a party without the scene collapsing into toe-curling embarrassment by confining the revellers into two simple cubed frames which whirled together and swallowed up the hapless host.
Passion is often taken as read in such a competitive industry but in this festival the actors were so obviously thrilled to be in the Olivier theatre that it was impossible not to feel the same way.
“Youth is the only thing worth having.” Oscar Wilde.
